I was just at your site yesterday getting the link for that black holocaust
flick for a friend..

keep up the good work..

Peace.

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Shadow and Act nice site! Yea, I'll look around and see if I can order the Zora film. BTW I got a few more films I'll be uploading shortly, I'll pass the word when there up. Thanks for sharing the info.

I loved how Maya Angelou brought out her research on cultural distinctions amongst the Blues. awesome. And i love how Zora Hurston is credited for bringing out the cultural vernacular out of our people. I'm so interested in finding out more about her. Not only do I find Zora an intriguing Black woman, I kind of feel an attachment to her very passion and also, she's my Soror! I so believe that she should have been more recognized for her skill and given much more credit for her genious. In that I mean too, that she certainly should have been paid much more money-- when she was alive!

I loved how Maya Angelou brought out her research on cultural distinctions amongst the Blues.awesome. And i love how Zora Hurston is credited for bringing out the cultural vernacular out of our people. I'm so interested in finding out more about her. Not only do I find Zora an intriguing Black woman, I kind of feel an attachment to her very passion and also, she's my Soror! I so believe that she should have been more recognized for her skill and given much more credit for her genius. In that I mean too, that she certainly should have been paid much more money-- when she was alive!Thanks for this information.

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The part with Maya Angelou is one of the parts that really moved me.. I love my people.. the sound of our language.. the blues.. the chants.. and so does she.. and it oozes out of her whenever she opens her mouth or picks up her pen. My Grandmothers generation was that way, but that's gone now. They're gone and leaving and that love for us as a people is leaving with them. It's not surprising you didn't hear about Zora at a HBCU. It's routine for the the upwardly mobile to shun their past.. I suspect it may be too heavy a load to carry.. many are ashamed of it.. it seems the function of our education has been to distance ourselves from ourselves.. to rise up out of our allegedly primitive Black African-ness and hover somewhere closer to what white folks are.. closer to right. and I can't tell you how sad that makes me.

I don't know anyone that went off to college and came back more in love with us as a people. So so many seem to confuse our socio/economic position within this American system with who and what we actually are. In their minds our condition is also our definition and to overcome our condition, they reason, we must overcome ourselves.

But my Grandmother's generation.. those ones that grew up in the rural south, went to all black schools and were nurtured by their communities, they had an in-built, ingrained love for there own people and the ways of their people. That generation was much more mature than we are now. They were in direct contact with chaos and they sharpened their cultural tools directly against that chaos and, as a result, they were more in tune with their own mental, physical and spiritual capabilities. There's no way to work 12 hours in the field and not be in touch with your body.. to not know how far you can bend this way or that before you fall over.. The very act of moving and bending informs the mind as to what the body is capable of.. And the same goes for the Spirit.. for the Community.. So, there was no way anyone could tell them what to make of their own experience. And they had no middleman interpreting their experience for them.

There was No Film, No TV, No literature, nothing that they themselves consumed on any large scale or that had enough oomf to out-oomf the sense that they themselves had made out of their own experience so, their affinity for our people was rooted in something local.. with something closer to their humanity.. to something without ulterior motives.. not profit, not sensationalism, not misdirection, not fame.. none of that.. their affinity for our people was rooted in a their affinity for their own selves.. for their own mothers and fathers and cousins.. And it wasn't something that they consciously articulated so much in words or speeches, though some did, it was something you observed from the way they spoke.. from the way that they sang.. from the way that they smiled.. from the way that they gathered and communed and mourned and celebrated and protested.. and even, as my grandmother once told me, from the way that they walked.

"Your Grandfather walked like he was somebody".. "like he was going somewhere", she said to me as she hooked my arm, puffed up her cheeks,straightened her back and marched me playfully back and forth down the hall. My walk changed after that. My attitude changed after that. And I cry whenever I recall that story. She saw me faltering under the weight of my own life and she recognized it, and she intervened in a way that was so short and sweet and profound that I'm utterly convinced that she saved my life.

And, I can hear somebody saying, "yeah, it was your grandmother".. but, no, it wasn't just her.There were many others.. in the Church, around the neighborhood, on the bus, at the school..they sit around my memory now weaved together into a feeling that anchors me and sustains me.There really is something special about that generation.. And it's all over everything they did.. their Art, their Music, their Literature/Poetry.. their Dance.. It's in all of their strivings.. My grandmother would just start singing out of the blue.. And it would just lift you right up.I think they considered themselves to be "us".. never "them". And looking back I think that's why I always gravitated toward them.

There was such love even in their incessant poking and prodding and criticism.. even in their discipline.. it seemed that their every action emanated from some wise and loving place that would ultimately somehow benefit you. They weren't ashamed of what they were or where they came from and they didn't confuse economic aspirations with cultural identity. So more money bought bigger and better but they still remained who they were.. that's what I grew up with. Plain folks, proud to be plain folks.. and that's what this profile of Zora reminds me of.Yeah.. Zora.. that's what we were talking about right? I get lost sometimes..

anyway.. I came to know her through "Dust Tracks On A Road" long ago.. and then much later when I became in our Folklore I found "Mules and Men" which is an invaluable collection of stories and songs and what not. And I read, "..there eyes were watching God" after I saw the Movie with Halle Berry.. After seeing this documentary, I really want to see her research. I want to see and hear it for myself.. I really need to hear those sounds.. those songs.. those voices.